Sons of Taranis (16 page)

The centurion’s tent bore the insignia of the First cohort. The loud laugh had belonged to the primus pilus, then. As Varus slowed near the tent, he could see through the open door the figures of two men he vaguely recognised deep in laughter and conversation, and deep in their cups too from the sound of it.

‘...and the tribune – one of those foppish boys from Rome barely off his mother’s tit, mark you – had the audacity to tell me to pull my men in. I had to bite into my lip to stop myself flattening the posh little prick with my staff.’

‘Should have done it,’ the other man, another senior centurion he recognised, grinned. ‘You’d have done the army a favour. Probably his mother too.’

Taking a deep breath, Varus nodded to the guards, hoping they would not intercept a man in the uniform of a senior officer, and made for the doorway. The two legionaries saluted him respectfully, but one cleared his throat noisily to warn the occupants of Varus’ approach. As the cavalry commander ducked into the tent’s entrance, the two centurions turned and gave weary salutes.

‘Evening you two. Pullo, isn’t it? And… Vorenus? I might suggest a little less vocality on the subject of men who could legitimately have you broken in the ranks, eh? Just for the sake of decorum?’

Pullo gave him the sort of look he would have expected if he’d asked the man to strip naked and stand on his head.

‘Respectfully, sir,
why
?’

‘Exactly because of that: respect.’

Pullo snorted. ‘That’s a bit rich, sir.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘I remember tell of you putting old Longinus in his place years back. And Crassus. And others. You’ve a bit of a reputation for speaking your mind, sir.’

Varus blinked and chuckled sheepishly. ‘Still, where your men might hear...’

Pullo stalked over to the door and looked around at the two men on guard. ‘Flavius?’

‘Sir?’

‘You remember that tribune with the jug ears we had last year? Went back to Rome after Alesia?’

‘Yessir.’

‘Speaking freely, I’d like you to sum him up in one word, soldier.’

‘That word would be ‘knob’, centurion.’

Pullo grinned. ‘Thank you Flavius. You can skip latrine detail tomorrow.’ He turned back to Varus. ‘The men already have their own opinions, sir, and we all know what they are. It doesn’t matter how hard you polish a turd, it still smells like a turd, and every man knows that from the centurionate to the new recruit.’

Again, Varus could only chuckle. ‘Very well. Then I’ll leave you to your defamation.’

‘Care to defame someone with us, sir? I happen to have acquired this fine large amphora in a small wager involving a cavalry trooper and an eating knife.’

Varus gave him a black look, and Pullo rallied well. ‘Oh come on, sir. We know your horse boys have their place, and they’ve done you proud for years, but few of them could stand in the shield wall and not shit himself.’

Varus’ eyes turned flinty and he cast a withering look at the centurion. ‘I know there’s a strained rivalry between my troopers and your legionaries, centurion, but I don’t expect to hear such blinkered, idiotic sentiments from an officer who should know better.’

Pullo shrugged, poured a cup of wine and proffered it to Varus. ‘Peace offering? No offence meant.’

Varus sighed and took the cup. ‘Fair enough. For the record, I’ve spent my fair share of time stood up to the knees in shit and blood, facing down the howling horde.’

‘I know that, sir. Your courage was never in doubt. Come on, let’s forget about rivalries and find someone to pull to pieces that we
both
hate. Have you seen Plancus recently?’

* * * * *

Varus straightened from lacing his boot and sat for a moment until the spots disappeared from his vision and the camelopard that was running around inside his head, churning his brains to mush, stopped for a rest. Gripping the chair back for support, he rose and stood for a moment, trying to marshal his thoughts, the uppermost of which involved the apparently endless capacity for wine of the centurionate. By the time he’d left Pullo’s tent last night, he felt as though he’d been physically abused. It felt like a night in Fronto’s tent used to feel.

Flashes of memory hit him, of that bedraggled trudge through the rain back to his own quarters. He’d been oblivious at the time, but now it seemed obvious that one of the legionaries on duty outside the centurion’s tent had shadowed him all the way through the camp, making sure he made it back intact. And while he had been about as compos mentis as a cabbage by the time he struggled out of the tent, Pullo and Vorenus had been going strong, louder than before and even less guarded in their comments, but completely in control of their bodies and minds, if not their mouths.

Varus realised that he’d actually relaxed last night in a manner that he’d not achieved in months. But now, when the courier from the general was standing outside waiting to escort him, and his head was hammering like the anvils of the legion workshops, he considered last night’s adventure to be a rather poor bit of decision making. He was also under absolutely no illusion that the centurions from the Eleventh were not already up, bathed, shaved, armoured and busy shouting at their men, dressing them in neat lines. Even thinking about a centurion shouting sent a lance of pain into the matter behind his left eye. He could vaguely hear the sounds of construction muffled by his tent leather. Or was that just in his head?

‘Sir?’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’

Throwing his cloak over his shoulders and fastening it with the bronze pin, Varus stepped out into the cold, white world of northern Gaul. A shiver wracked him from toe to head and back.

‘You alright sir?’

‘Never better. Just don’t shout.’

Trying to ignore the sly smile the legionary flicked him, Varus glowered and followed across the turf and down the camp’s Via Praetoria, which led to the gate facing the gathered Gallic army. His head began to take on that extra crushing pain that could only be the result of a hangover exacerbated by the chill wet mist and the sounds of two thousand legionaries already chopping and adzing timber, hammering posts into place and the myriad other agonising noises of the ongoing fortification of the hill.

Mere heartbeats later, he was climbing the earth mound beside the gate to where Caesar stood with the other staff officers and the watch centurion, as well as several dismounted scout riders. Reaching the top, Varus peered out into the mist following the direction of their gaze.

Eerily, the enemy camp was clearly visible, along with the sea of humanity within, though the combination of the cold and the swampy ground had resulted in a thick mist that became a whiter, denser fog towards the waterways below. The result was that the enemy’s hill fortress rose from a blanket of white like an island in a ghostly sea. The effect did little to lift Varus’ battered spirits.

The courier had said enemy reinforcements were arriving and that the general had summoned his officers to the gate. Little looked any different from here.

‘Reinforcements, general?’

Caesar turned a withering gaze on him. ‘Ah, commander.’ Amazing how the man could fit so much admonition into two such simple words. Varus flinched as the general breathed slowly. ‘A few moments ago the traitor Commius returned with his Germans.’

Varus’ spirits sank yet lower. ‘How many, general?’

‘Therein lies the good news. They appear to be Suebi, from what your scouts tell me, but at the highest estimate he brings only half a thousand with him. Not a great return on his efforts, but then I did not think the Germanic tribes would be enthusiastic about entering into another war with us.’

Brutus rubbed his eye. ‘Your scouts rode round the entire circuit at dawn today. The current estimate of enemy numbers is that they amount to perhaps forty five thousand. That includes the newly-arrived Germans, and must account for every fighting man from each tribe involved. This is the enemy army in its entirety, so if we can finish them here, then we’ll have done to the Belgae what Alesia did to the southern tribes. There won’t be enough able men left to raise a shout, let alone a rebellion.’

‘I’m not sure how you hope to achieve that, Caesar?’ Varus hazarded quietly.

‘Oh?’

‘We’re hardly in a position to attack them. Their position is too strong and they outnumber us by too high a margin to be confident of victory.’ Caesar nodded, listening carefully, so Varus scratched his head and went on. ‘Well, if we manage to lure them out now, we’re truly in the latrine. If we meet them straight in the field they outnumber us enough that we could easily lose, especially with the surrounding woods and swamps limiting the usefulness of the horse. And if we let them besiege us, yes we have a strong fortress now, but even if we forage like mad, it’s winter and we’ll be very unlikely to pull together enough food to see the army through more than a few days. No course of action looks favourable.’

‘Agreed,’ Caesar murmured quietly. ‘And that is why I sent out riders at haste last night.’

‘Sir?’

‘I have sent for Trebonius to bring the Tenth and the Twelfth, and to pick up Sextius and his Thirteenth on the way. They are the closest legions to our current position. The couriers took changes of horse with them, so I am confident that they will arrive at the camps by nightfall today. Trebonius has orders to march at all haste without a full supply train, in the same manner as we did. If everything works out as I anticipate, in four days we will almost double our force. With seven veteran legions, I could bring down an army of Titans.’

Varus nodded. Seven legions would, at least, be more than a match for the enemy.

‘We need to keep the enemy interested in the meantime, though. We must keep their attention riveted on us. We will attempt skirmishes wherever possible and keep them occupied until the reserves join us. I want the enemy too busy concentrating on our minutiae to notice the underlying plan. I anticipate the legions’ arrival, as I say, either in the evening four days from now, or the morning after.’

He turned to the small group of officers and singled out Mamurra.

‘Appius?’

‘General?’

‘Are you required for any further work on the camp?’

The engineer shook his head. ‘I think things are progressing well enough in the hands of the legion engineers now, sir. I might be consulted from time to time, but otherwise…’

‘Good.’ The general smiled. ‘I want you to turn your talents to a new project. I want you to plan a bridge across the swamps from this hill to that one. I want it to be sturdy and wide enough for a contubernium of men to march abreast. And most importantly I want it to be able to put in place in a matter of hours. Half a day at most.’

Mamurra blinked, peering down into the sea of swirling, ethereal white below. ‘That’s near impossible, general.’

‘That is why I entrust such a task to a man who has a reputation for achieving the impossible. I do not want it in place now. I want to put it up four days from now, finishing by nightfall. I want it in place a matter of hours before Trebonius arrives with the reserves, so that the enemy have no time to plan anything. I want them off-balance and concerned, and then to suddenly find that their fortress is vulnerable and that their enemy have doubled in numbers and are coming for them unexpectedly. Do you understand the strategy?’

Varus did. It was brilliant. It was also extremely risky.

‘General, what happens if Trebonius is delayed by days?’

‘Then the enemy will rally and probably destroy the bridge – they
do
have vastly superior numbers, after all. And then our entire strategy collapses. Similar issues occur if Trebonius is over-enthusiastic and runs his men into the ground to join us, getting here before the bridge is built. Then the enemy will have knowledge of our full force and time to plan. So we shall just have to rely on my estimates being accurate, shall we not?’

Mamurra sucked on his lower lip as his gaze moved up and down from the sea of white to the hill opposite. ‘It’s possible, sir. This mist seems to happen every morning as a consequence of the marshes. We could send teams down there the morning before, under cover of darkness. They could ram in the piles for the bridge in the mist, which would help deaden the sound. Then, when the time came, we would already have the supports. We would only have to build the superstructure. And if we have three days, as soon as this camp is finished we could start putting together the bridge in pieces within the camp. Then we can run out the bridge already partially constructed and assemble it swiftly when needed. And we could start with a causeway of timbers at our side of the marsh earlier. The bridge will only be required for the central, wider, section. It is entirely possible, sir.’

Caesar smiled. ‘I knew you would come up with something, Mamurra. Start working on your plans. Take any men you need from any legion and get to work.’

Varus peered at the enemy force. It was an audacious plan, and worked on narrow timings. But it would nullify both the enemy’s advantage in numbers and their fortified position.

‘I think I need a drink,’ he croaked, rubbing his thumping head and looking down into the white world of deadly swamps.